[one of my students is turning out to be very talented at reading Old English, so I hope to post a recording of her reading “The Wife’s Lament” and “Wulf and Eadwacer,” so that the poems can be in a female voice as well].

The poem tells the story of a woman who has been separated from her husband due to the plotting of his kinsmen. Her husband (lord) has ordered her to live in an earth-cave under an oak tree. She weeps for her exile and her hardship.